@AntiTrumpReport's Threads

BREAKING: President Trump’s actions so alarmed the FBI after James Comey’s firing that it began investigating if he was working on behalf of Russia nyti.ms/2D6wdAF

Days after Trump fired James Comey, law enforcement officials became so concerned by the president’s behavior that they began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests, according to former law enforcement officials and other sources

The inquiry carried explosive implications. Counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether the president’s own actions constituted a possible threat to national security.

🚩BREAKING: Michael Cohen to publicly testify before the House Oversight Committee on Feb. 7. Expected to be grilled on his involvement in hush money schemes during the 2016 campaign, the planned 2016 Trump Tower project in Moscow, among other matters. - NYT, CNN, Bloomberg

NYT: Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer who implicated him in a scheme to pay hush money to 2 women claiming to have had affairs with him, has agreed to testify before House Oversight and give “a full and credible account” of his work for Trump. nyti.ms/2RIv3TV

BREAKING: Russian operatives posing as a savvy L.A. startup recruited American business owners as customers to gain access to their social-media accounts wsj.com/articles/russi… via @WSJ

The Russian operation to influence Americans through social media included an effort to persuade business owners to buy into a marketing campaign and turn over private information, an examination by The Wall Street Journal found.

The outfit appears to be an arm of the Internet Research Agency, the St. Petersburg troll farm charged in a federal indictment in February with interfering in the U.S. election, according to a Journal analysis of email, PayPal , Skype and social-media accounts used by the group.

BREAKING: NYT investigation: Internal Facebook records show that the company gave Microsoft, Amazon, Netflix and other tech giants far more intrusive access to your personal data than it ever disclosed nyti.ms/2Cmpm5q

Bombshell Thread: For years, Facebook gave some of the world’s largest technology companies more intrusive access to users’ personal data than it has disclosed, effectively exempting those business partners from its usual privacy rules, according to internal records & interviews.

The special arrangements are detailed in hundreds of pages of Facebook documents obtained by The NYT. The records, generated in 2017 by the company’s internal system for tracking partnerships, provide the most complete picture yet of the social network’s data-sharing practices.

The WSJ found that Mr. Trump was involved in or briefed on nearly every step of the agreements. He directed deals in phone calls and meetings with Michael Cohen and others. The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan has gathered evidence of Trump’s participation in the transactions.

A $45,000 payment to an undisclosed law firm. A cash withdrawal for $14,000. Almost $90,000 sent to or from a Russian bank. These and other bank transactions totaling nearly $300,000, none of which have been made public, --

offer the first detailed look at how an accused foreign agent and a Republican operative financed what prosecutors say was a Russian campaign to influence American politics.

BREAKING: A federal judge in Washington ruled Monday that the Trump administration is violating its own policy by uniformly denying parole to asylum-seekers who have passed their “credible fear” interviews — a key step in the asylum process.

In the decision, the court sided with the immigrants who brought the class action and ordered the Trump administration to restore the practice of granting fair, individual parole hearings to asylum-seekers who have passed that initial threshold.

Prevailing at the parole hearing means that an asylum-seeker is released from detention and allowed to remain in the country pending a decision on their asylum petition, a process that can take several years.

Since Donald Trump declared his candidacy for president in late 2015, at least $16.1 million has poured into Trump Organization-managed and branded hotels, golf courses and restaurants from his campaign, Republican organizations, and government agencies. propublica.org/article/politi…

Because Trump’s business empire is overseen by a trust of which he is the sole beneficiary, he profits from these hotel stays, banquet hall rentals and meals.

To arrive at the total, we compiled campaign finance reports from the FEC; state government spending gleaned from dozens of state websites and portals; and federal agency expenditure records obtained by the Washington-based transparency organization Property of the People.

Election law experts from across the political spectrum largely agree that the New York attorney general made a compelling case this week that Trump’s campaign and his charitable foundation violated federal campaign finance laws during the 2016 election. nyti.ms/2JMSLvi

Ms. Underwood’s office lacks the authority to prosecute federal matters. So, when she filed the lawsuit, she simultaneously sent letters to the IRS and the FEC asking those agencies to investigate the alleged violations of federal tax laws and campaign finance laws, respectively.

And, for good measure, on the letter to the F.E.C., she copied two top officials from the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, which is charged with investigating and prosecuting criminal violations of election laws.

ProPublica: Russian oligarch-linked firm that paid Michael Cohen was also represented by long time Trump lawyer Marc Kasowitz. (THREADED)propublica.org/article/columb…

The same shell company that Michael Cohen used to pay $130K to Stormy Daniels had also received $500K in 2017 from a firm linked to Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg.

At the heart of the story is an investment firm called Columbus Nova, which has close links to Renova Group, a conglomerate founded by Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg. A Columbus Nova spokesman has said the payments to Cohen were for unspecified investment consulting.

NYT: Michael Cohen’s partners often ended up on the wrong side of the law. His business deals raised questions. Then he became Donald Trump’s lawyer. (THREADED) Part 2 nyti.ms/2KDvM2n

After he had built a taxi operation and a personal injury legal practice, there was another element to Mr. Cohen’s business dealings, this one involving doctors and companies that operated on the fringes of the medical field.

Starting in 2000, Mr. Cohen set up a series of companies in New York City. There were two medical practices, an acupuncture office, two medical billing companies, two management companies and a transportation company.

NYT: Michael Cohen’s partners often ended up on the wrong side of the law. His business deals raised questions. Then he became Donald Trump’s lawyer. (THREADED) nyti.ms/2KDvM2n

Before Michael Cohen joined the Trump Org and became Trump’s lawyer, he was a personal-injury attorney and businessman. Now a significant portion of his quarter-century business record is under the microscope of prosecutors, posing a threat not just to Cohen but also to Trump.

People in the Trump camp contacted private investigators in May last year to “get dirt” on Ben Rhodes, who had been one of Barack Obama’s top national security advisers, and Colin Kahl, deputy assistant to Obama, as part of an elaborate attempt to discredit the deal.

Sources said that officials linked to Trump’s team contacted investigators days after Trump visited Tel Aviv a year ago. Trump promised Netanyahu Iran would never have nuclear weapons and said that Iran thinks they could “do what they want” since negotiating the deal in 2015.

🚩 NYT: Exclusive: Robert Mueller wants to ask President Trump dozens of questions to determine if he obstructed justice. The Times has the list. nyti.ms/2JEG1lG

Here are the questions Mueller wants to ask Trump:

"The open-ended queries appear to be an attempt to penetrate the president’s thinking, to get at the motivation behind some of his most combative Twitter posts and to examine his relationships with his family and his closest advisers."

Comey says he hasn't had access to his memos in a while but is ok with transparency.

On the use of his memos when considering the president's intent in a potential obstruction of justice case: "I'm sure the special counsel is considering my recollection of those events." Sorry, your browser doesn't support embedded videos